The registered trademark symbol (®) is a symbol that provides notice that the preceding word or symbol is a trademark or service mark that has been registered with a national trademark office. A trademark is a symbol, word, or words legally registered or established by use as representing a company or product.[1][2] In some countries it is against the law to use the registered trademark symbol for a mark that is not officially registered in any country.[1]

Trademarks not officially registered can instead be marked with the trademark symbol ™, while unregistered service marks are marked with the service mark symbol ℠. The proper manner to display these symbols is immediately following the mark, and is commonly in superscript style but is not legally required.

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Computer usage

The registered trademark symbol.

The registered trademark character has a standardized representation in most computer systems. It is mapped in Unicode as U+00AE®REGISTERED SIGN.[4][5] The registered trademark symbol ® is distinct, in computer representation, from the similar character U+24C7ⓇCIRCLED LATIN CAPITAL LETTER R (enclosed R)

Because the ® symbol is not commonly available on typewriters and ASCII-based computer systems, it is common to approximate it with the characters (R) (or (r)); for example, the Python programming language Trademark Usage Policy advocates this usage.[6] Example of legal equivalents are the phrase Registered, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which may be abbreviated to Reg U.S. Pat & TM Off.,[7] in the U.S.,[2] and the letters RTM in the UK.[1]

^PSF Trademark Usage Policy. https://www.python.org/psf/trademarks/ "The first or most prominent mention of a Python trademark should be immediately followed by a symbol for registered trademark: "®" or "(r)"."